


The Cranewood Haunting

by APgeeksout



Category: Hart of Dixie
Genre: F/M, Gen, Halloween, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2016-10-30
Packaged: 2018-08-27 23:34:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8421979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/APgeeksout/pseuds/APgeeksout
Summary: Bluebell's newest Halloween attraction.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [burglebezzlement](https://archiveofourown.org/users/burglebezzlement/gifts).



"There are no such thing as ghosts, Wade Kinsella," Lemon said, and took a sip of her sweet tea before continuing. "Growing up, how many nights did you stay there overnight on silly dares?"

"Silly dares you made," he reminded her, smiling crookedly as he set a glass of cherry-limeade on the bar in front of AnnaBeth.

"Be that as it may, the Cranewood house is not haunted." It was just neglected. If someone put a little care into it, it could be saved before it sagged in on itself and fell apart. Lemon had been there; she could relate. 

"What if it could be?" Lavon spoke up as he crossed the room, taking off his hat and leaning down to kiss her cheek before he claimed the stool beside her. "Haunted Houses can be a real tourist attraction."

"The Belles _have_ been looking for a fall project," AnnaBeth added. "We could do spooky tours in October, and use the proceeds to restore the house."

"If y'all do it, I want to be a ghost," Wade grinned.

* * *

Six weeks of work - repairs to make the house safe for tours, cleaning all the surfaces, covering all those same surfaces over with dark fabric and blacklight paint and faux blood and cotton spiderwebs - later, and the house built by Colonel Cranewood for his sickly young bride was well and truly full of horrors.

The basement was home to a laboratory, where Dr. Hart-less and her ghoulish nurse AnnaBeth did some unspeakable experiment on a wailing Magnolia, all of them drizzled with a Karo-and-Kool-aid fake blood. The back garden was given over to a monster petting zoo, where Tom and Wanda Long had somehow coaxed an assortment of goats and kittens and one very overweight chicken into costumes. Wade had not ended up as a ghost, but seemed happy enough in the kitchen, wearing a gory apron and stirring a gruesome stockpot, offering the tours dishes of black "soup" with rubber eyeballs floating to the surface. George Tucker sat in a creaking rocker on the landing of the broad grand staircase, strumming a guitar and singing songs with modified lyrics about the living dead, apparently undisturbed by the rubber hatchet embedded in his skull. In the nursery, a ghostly white Shelby haunted Daddy, decked out in something like the mourning suit the Colonel would have worn.

Lemon lifted her skirts carefully as she went up the back staircase, steeper and narrower than the one that spilled into the foyer, and emerged into the dim red light of the attic. Lavon spun away from the gleaming coffin tucked beneath the eaves, his velvet cape swirling dramatically around him. 

"Ahahaha," he laughed maniacally, his false fangs glimmering in the dark, "there is my Queen of the Night."

She laughed and crossed the creaking floorboards to his side, the cloak falling around her shoulders as he curled an arm around her.

"How did I let you talk me into this get-up?" 

"Maybe Count Hayes has you in his thrall?" he suggested, his mouth nuzzling against the smear of fake blood painted over her bare throat. 

"Just maybe," she agreed, and turned her laugh into a flailing shriek as the heavy squeal of the door's hinges signaled the arrival of the first tour.


End file.
